Generating sales in a brick-and-mortar retail environment can be challenging, especially with increased competition from Internet-based retailers. Many online retailers lack the overhead costs associated with a physical store presence, such as the cost of rent, salespeople, theft, shrink, and security personnel, among others. Thus, online retailers generally are able to sell products at prices cheaper than those at brick-and-mortar locations. Online retailers are also able to conveniently deliver the shopping experience directly to the consumer, regardless of where the consumer is located. Additionally, the digital showroom provided by an online retailer enables consumers to more quickly and conveniently compare products, access and read product reviews, and discuss a potential product purchase with friends and family located elsewhere, often through the use of instant messaging, short message service (“SMS”), and other communication platforms such as social media networks.
As a result of the competition from online retailers, many brick-and-mortar retail establishments must compete by showcasing their products, providing an environment in which consumers can view, sample, touch and experience a product. For example, brick-and-mortar electronics retailers often provide consumers with live demonstrations, such as playing movies on television sets or providing kiosks that enable consumers to listen to music before making a purchase. Many of these retailers also provide consumers with the opportunity to test certain products, such as cameras, computers, and video games, prior to making a purchase. Similarly, clothing, sporting good, and big box retailers, among others, often allow consumers to try on items of interest in a changing room to see how the product looks and feels. Regardless of the exact method, it has become increasingly important for traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to enable and encourage consumers to interact with and test products in a fun, entertaining, interactive and exciting environment in order to complete a sale. The ability of brick-and-mortar retailers to provide consumers with an opportunity to interact with a product has become a critical competitive advantage, if executed properly.
Nevertheless, many brick-and-mortar retailers struggle to balance the need to promote products through samples and live demonstrations while also protecting their inventory and products from damage and theft. Many different types of security apparatuses currently exist to secure consumer goods to or within retail establishments, which are otherwise accessible for consumers to access, touch, explore, investigate, experience and sample. For example, consumer electronic products are often physically secured to a display area by cables. Clothing, in turn, is often secured with the use of a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag, which sounds an alarm or triggers an ink-based explosion when the consumer who is accessing the product removes it from a designated area within the retail establishment. Additionally, many items, ranging from firearms to even teeth whitening packets in a pharmacy, are secured by RFID tags and even further by devices such as a locked glass encasement.
These security apparatuses, however, have many disadvantages. First, they often restrict and limit consumers' ability to access, touch, explore, investigate, experience and sample the products in a manner that provides an opportunity to truly test many of the product's features. For example, a digital camera that is secured to a display shelf by a metal cable prohibits the consumer from testing and experiencing the full functionality of the product. The consumer is confined to the limited surrounding that is within the reach of the security cable, which may not be an ideal testing ground for the product. Second, access is often further restricted and limited by insufficient (and costly) manpower. In particular, salespeople are often unable to service the volume of consumers who wish to test or sample a product that must be unlocked or removed from a security apparatus. For example, a consumer wishing to try on a leather jacket secured to a hanger or display shelf at a department store must find a salesperson to remove the cable and disable the alarm. The salesperson must then wait while the consumer tries on the jacket and contemplates whether to purchase the item. With more expensive luxury goods, this process may take a substantial amount of time—time during which the salesperson is unable to service other consumers. When this happens, unattended consumers often get tired of waiting and, feeling neglected and frustrated by the lack of service, take their business elsewhere. This can leave a lasting negative impression on those consumers that is extremely costly and difficult to change. Third, security guards and surveillance equipment, which are expensive and can be intrusive to the consumer, often have the effect of intimidating consumers and creating a hostile and anxiogenic shopping environment. Fourth, loud and frightening alarms that sound when a consumer, intentionally or unintentionally, removes a secured product from a designated area similarly create a tense and hostile shopping environment. Lastly, some existing security devices intentionally trigger an ink-based explosion in order to destroy the merchandise when it is removed from a designated secure area. These devices do not prevent the theft, but merely ensure the destruction or damage of the product in an attempt to discourage theft of the product.
Additionally, the theft prevention techniques mentioned above do not enable the brick-and-mortar retailer to capitalize on the relationship that is created with the consumer during the consumer's in-store interaction with and testing of the product after the consumer has left the retail establishment. For example, the failure of a consumer to purchase a product that was sampled while visiting a brick-and-mortar store does not mean that the consumer does not want to purchase the product. Rather, the consumer may wish to gather additional information, add it to a “wish list” for others to buy on his or her behalf, or merely give further thought to the purchase. In these circumstances, it's important for a brick-and-mortar business to be able to maintain the relationship with the consumer outside of the store, whether in the consumer's home or anywhere else where the consumer may decide to make the purchase.
Thus, a new system and method is needed to give consumers access to a product with fewer restrictions and intrusive security measures while maintaining sufficient anti-theft technologies to identify, deter, and stop theft. Also, a system and method is needed that can integrate the interactive showcasing and sampling opportunities found in traditional brick-and-mortar retailers with the convenient, pressure-free, and web-based social characteristics found through online shopping. Furthermore, a system and method is needed that enables a consumer to seamlessly and wirelessly store and access information concerning a product of interest, or a product that the consumer sampled or tested at a brick-and-mortar store. Furthermore, a system and method is needed that enables a consumer to purchase the products that the consumer was able to test and sample while at the brick-and-mortar retailer at any time after such sampling, regardless of where the consumer is located. A system and method of this type will enable a brick-and-mortar retailer to transfer the benefits of its personalized consumer service opportunities to the convenient web-based purchase methods more commonly provided by online retailers.